March 8th, 2012: I do know it’s not a broken scale, although I’m tempted to blame it on that. What it is, I think, is that I ate a huge dill pickle yesterday. It was a salty sucker. And damn tasty. So of course I ate another and another and another and another – for a total of 5. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that. On top of that, I drank at least a gallon of water – and I didn’t exercise. Perfect storm for turning into fuckin water balloon. I can almost feel myself sloshing around when I walk. Three pound gain in one day! Dammit why the holding pattern right around 300!?! So here I am at 304. Again.
I save little bits of info like an oyster saves a piece of sand – in that it will stick with me and irritate me. Even though I try to ignore it, it comes back sometimes. But it never turns into a pearl.
OCD Story #1: I had heard somewhere that someone left their coffee maker on all day and it ended up burning down their house. I poured my cup of coffee one morning and looked over at my dog sitting on the couch and the thought of her burning up in a house fire all of a sudden caused that info from long ago to come back onto my brain’s desktop, and I began to worry about burning the house down with my coffee maker. So I checked, then double checked that the coffee maker was off. I got out to my truck, and wondered if I really had shut off the coffee maker. So I got out of the truck, went back into the house and checked again. Went back out to the truck and started the truck. Shit, did I really turn off the coffee maker? So I turned off the truck, took the keys, unlocked the house, went in, and actually unplugged the coffee maker. Went out to the truck, backed out of the driveway, and then asked myself “is that thing really unplugged?” Went back in, grabbed the coffee maker and took the damn thing out to the truck and took it into town with me.
OCD Story #2: Someone I know once did discover that his bathroom scale was actually broken. Dismissed that kernel of info, at first. Now every damn time I get on the scale I wonder if my scale is broken, especially when I get a read-out I didn’t want or expect. This morning I was nearly sure of it.
If I actually get OCD enough about this that I go buy a new scale, in order to verify that my first scale is working, I’m going to ask my doctor to increase my daily dose of citalopram, because otherwise by June my house will not have tile or carpet. Every square inch of floor space will be taken up with a bathroom scale.
I wish I could find a way to make OCD work for me. Until that day, I guess I’ll just keep smiling and fighting.
March 8th, 2020: I think that, in general, the term “hell” is relative to the user. One person’s hell is another’s heaven. For example, a craft fair would be a small sampling of hell for me. The entrance to the craft barn at the Eastern Idaho State Fair would be the gate into that introductory level of hell. Conversely, smelling cow manure in the barns at the same fair brings me back to my childhood growing up around horses and cows, so it’s a little bit of heaven for me. There are people I know who’d consider a barn door a gate into a lower level of hell, especially if they got hit with the smell of cow shit.
Now we fold this idea into diet, exercise, and overall physical fitness. An unimpeded 60-minute stairmaster session is exercise nirvana for me. Lately, I’ve been putting on an 83 lb. weight vest, in addition to 10 pounds of ankle weights, and a 1 lb. MMA glove on each hand. It’s all about gallons of sweat and loud country-rock and 80’s rock music after that. I know people who won’t touch that machine because it’s just too demonic looking and feeling, especially after 4 or 5 minutes on it when you haven’t done it before. “Heaven” for me, “hell” for someone else.
Didn’t start that way, however. I wouldn’t touch the stairmaster myself. Until I did. I grinded through 5 minutes, going about as fast as a sloth would go. The next time I went for 6 minutes, etc. This was 5 or 6 years ago. “Personal exercise evolution” I call it.
As a side-note, can you imagine what my grandparents and great-grandparents would think if they saw me strap on all this weight and walk up stairs to nowhere? “That’s one daffy sumbitch right there.” I can almost hear my grandpa saying it.
Plyometric workouts are hell for me. Damn, I can almost feel my joints crunching and my constant gasps for air. I can’t/won’t do these without a personal trainer or coach reminding me to stop being a pussy and get to work. Others swear by these types of workouts – heaven for them. God bless ‘em.
What’s your exercise heaven? What’s your exercise hell? I suggest hanging out in heaven like three-fourths of the time, but also purposely spending some time in hell. Liabilities into assets…
